Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/749

Rh The old proverb de gustibus can hardly prevent astonishment at the diversity of tastes. What would Pythagoras have said about our national dish of pork and beans, or what shall we say to explain the Japanese prejudice against milk, the Papuan's partiality for fat white caterpillars, or the gliraria that were attached to every decent household of imperial Rome? Athenæus describes a glirarium as a large brick structure, divided by wire partitions into small cells, from five hundred to two thousand of them; every cell the receptacle of a captive rat, which was fattened on husks, rotten fish, and other offal, till a further increase in bulk would make it difficult to extract the animal through the narrow door of its cage. The perfect specimens were then collected, stuffed with crushed figs, and served in a sauce of olive-oil at the-banquets of wealthy patriots who preferred domestic delicacies to colonial imports. The Digger Indians of our Pacific slope rejoiced in the great locust-swarms of 1875 as in a gracious dispensation of the Great Spirit, and laid in a store of dried locust-powder for years to come. Even mineral substances and strong mineral poisons have their votaries. Mithridates, King of Pontus, could take a large dose of arsenic with impunity, and the mountaineers of Savoy and southern Switzerland use arsenic habitually as a safeguard against pulmonic affections. The poor Norsemen often mix their daily bread with a whitish mineral powder, more from necessity than a vitiated taste, we hope; but a similar substance is employed by the natives of Brazil and other parts of tropical America without any such excuse. The name of Panama is derived from panamante (originally pan-de-monte, mountain-bread), a substance which the Indians of Central America prepared from a mealy gypsum powder, found here and there in the Sierra. Humboldt describes a tribe of Indians in northern Brazil who have been addicted to the use of panamante for generations, and were distinguished by a monstrous protuberance and induration of the upper abdomen. When the French were masters of St. Domingo their negro slaves had contracted a similar passion, and could only be restrained by barbarous punishments from indulging it to excess.

It would be erroneous to suppose that cannibalism has become quite extinct. Among the Dyaks of Borneo there is a recurrence of the outrage after every petty feud and raid, and many of the South Sea Islands are still infested with secret anthropophagi. The Pintos, an aboriginal tribe of Yucatan, have repeatedly been detected in cannibal practices; and phenomenal cases have occurred in Asia after every protracted famine. In 1873 the Chasseurs d'Afrique captured an old Kabyle on the plateau of Sidi-Belbez (Algiers), who had committed innumerable murders to indulge this horrible passion, and had twice been caught in flagrante by his countrymen, who contented themselves with giving him a good hiding the first time, and released him on another occasion when they found his victim had only been a French settler!

The slaughter-houses of every large city are visited by delicate ladies,